Has there been any movement on this? We’re completely replacing our current wireless (NetSpot was a BIG help in getting this approved), but we’d like to be able to do some predictive site planning. If it’s not in the immediate future, we’ll still be using the tool to tweak final placement. But I’d rather not pay a third-party contractor what I can do myself.

Unfortunately, we don’t have anything to show you yet. Once we have the beta, or at least something working, we will be glad to upload it to everyone. We are working on several major improvements and updates now.

I’d also be very excited about this feature, although I expect that a big part of the expense of competing tools such as Ekahau come from the ongoing process of evaluating vendor equipment and modeling their behavior in such a way as to have the software project their performance for predictive site surveys. In other words, I would expect it to be costly.

Any level of prediction within software emulated WiFi coverage is theoretical, and gives only the basic idea of how the data may be flowing over the air. We are doing our best working with real equipment and modelling signal penetration capabilities to reach the most authentic results possible. But it’s still just a projection. Real-life material properties may differ substantially.